I think the idea, pioneered by harpsichordists, of scaling may well be true, although there are still some uncertainties in my mind, particularly in regards to notches of various types, but also in regard to paired instruments, or trios and quartets of instruments. Assuming that "tone apart" held sway, one can still freely scale. At certains points, or continua, these pairs then overlap.
However, with all due respect to those much better versed in the inns and outs of pitches than me, I stll maintain that any equation of the form A=xHz, where A is a non transposing pitch, and x the frequency, cannot be true. However, as it affects scale, with the caveat that lutes may often scale in pairs, this simply adds another dimension to the idea, so that one can scale by assigning a course rather than an absolute pitch. This reflects historical notational practice. In the subterrannean bar at the my last German festival a few weeks ago, after a few drinks, and many more, a fierce argument ensued on pitch--no one wins of course--and one person said: "have you not seen all the cornettos, they are all at the same length--465 or therabouts" So I travelled to Verona, and looked at the mountain of cornettos there, and they were all different sizes. And so it goes. I did get to play the 16th century flute, however. Was it a D flute or a C flute? No way to know. There were 6 of them, in the world perhaps 24. Perhaps the answer, as far as theorbos go, is to have a new definition of theorbo. Slim chance that everyone will agree on the definition, but perhaps a collective attempt is the way to go. I propose the following: Theorbo A bass lute or renaissance lute with an extended neck enabling additional, unfretted bass notes: instruments based on, or developed from these models. I'm sure someone can come up with a better one; I don't mind being the worst :) dt At 02:29 PM 6/1/2008, you wrote: >I agree, Howard. The same holds true in baroque lutes, in which surviving >instruments had various string lengths. > >ed > >At 02:09 PM 6/1/2008 -0700, howard posner wrote: > >The one thing that makes no sense is to simply wish away the range of > >pitches that existed historically because it doesn't mesh with our > >preconceptions of what a theorbo should be. > > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
